Well, This Is a Surprise…. NOT

Karl Rove’s help for Sweden as it assists the Obama administration’s prosecution against WikiLeaks could be the latest example of the adage, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”

Rove has advised Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt for the past two years after resigning as Bush White House political advisor in mid-2007. Rove’s resignation followed the scandalous Bush mid-term political purge of nine of the nation’s 93 powerful U.S. attorneys.

These days, Sweden and the United States are apparently undertaking a political prosecution as audacious and important as those by the notorious “loyal Bushies” earlier this decade against U.S. Democrats.

The U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks, if successful, could criminalize many kinds of investigative news reporting about government affairs, not just the WikiLeaks disclosures that are embarrassing Sweden as well as the Bush and Obama administrations. Authorities in both countries are setting the stage with pre-indictment sex and spy smears against WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, plus an Interpol manhunt.

That emphasis above is mine — although I certainly have no illusions that the potential criminalization of investigative news reporting would steal even a few moments of a good night’s sleep for those “conservatives” or “libertarians” (not all, by any means, but a significant number) who fear government power when it’s about national health care or regulating oil companies or having a minimum wage, but don’t mind it at all — indeed, applaud it — when it’s about prosecuting journalists for exposing government wrongdoing.